Public Whip Count

February 17, 2009

ABA endorses UAFA

Posted by: Andoni

The Uniting American Families Act (UAFA) keeps rolling along. The good news is that yesterday the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates approved a resolution supporting UAFA. It was the first time UAFA came up before the ABA body -- and it passed on the first try. This is just one of many influential organizations that have now endorsed UAFA.

UAFA was re-introduced on Thursday by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in the House and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in the Senate. Just three days after introduction UAFA already has 81 co-sponsors in the House and 16 15 in the Senate. These impressive numbers will continue to increase, but we can help them increase faster if we contact our Senators and Congresspeople.

Congress begins anew every two years, so UAFA had to be reintroduced and as a result was assigned new legislation numbers. In the House it's now H.R. 1024 and in the Senate, S. 424.

If you want UAFA to continue its momentum, we need to keep calling our elected officials and ask them to co-sponsor this legislation. Explain why it's so important for you. Tell your legislators that it's the fair and equal thing to do. Multiply your effect, by getting your relatives and friends to call and write as well. This year I got my three nices and sister to lobby their Senators and Congressman, as well as all my "fiends" on my email lists. If we all enlist our friends and relatives, this bill can be passed this year.

Here is a web site to find your elected officials along with contact information, in case you don't know who they are. If UAFA is to pass this year, we all need to get working.

UAFA would allow the US citizen half of a gay couple (where other is foreign born), to sponsor his/her partner to live in the United States. This is simply granting gay couples the same right to sponsor their partner that opposite sex couples have.

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Comments

Andoni, I agree, We all need to work to pass the UAFA. Tell your friends and family. Go out on a night to some local bars and pubs and hand out cards explaining how passing the Uniting American Families Act will help us. I would like to see if someone who is good with art/layout could put together some cards or 1/4 page prints we could hand out. Most GLBT folk don’t even know what the UAFA is.

Now is when we need to get everyone involved. This has been my home for 44 years and it is where I have established my life. I am AMERICAN! I should not even have thoughts of leaving the country I love in my mind and heart! My Father, Mother, Partner, and Dog are as I write this in another Country because of discriminatory Immigration laws. As far as I know it still is liberty and justice for ALL not just the majority. Lets all work to get this passed this year.

You guys, Chris and Andoni, need to start posting more. All you seem to care about is this UAFA. While I want Gays to be able to bring their partners over if they wish. It is getting tedious, when that is all rich, white guys care about is bring over their pretty boy Latin lovers.

DaveA - I know you must be writing tongue in cheek because UAFA is but a very small percentage of what we post. And I know you are kidding because the same complex demographics apply to gays in bi-national relationships as to the rest of the community. Rich is not the norm. White may be....but only because it is the majority of our community as well. And Latin boyfriends.....? Is that what you have wet dreams about? Latin is not the norm either. My boyfriend is from Thailand. I know many other couples and their partners are from Germany, Finland, Norway, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, India, Australia, Canada, Turkey and oh, there is one from Brazil.

I think you must dream of Latin guys all the time. Want me to introduce you to one?

DaveA, I am going to side with Andoni. While, indeed, it is nice occasionally to read a post that has nothing to do with bi-national relationships, I think that you might be missing the main thrust of this site which is exemplified by the great quote at the top of the home page. In case you missed it, I have copied and pasted it for your review.

"No government has the right to tell its citizens whom to love. The only queer people are those who don't love anybody. — Rita Mae Brown"

If you are looking for in-depth coverage of the entire, wide-ranging gay scene, Gay.com, Queerty.com and Towelroad.com can provide you with all the titillating tidbits you little heart desires.

As to your snarky swipe at rich, white guys and their pretty boy Latin lovers, it was below the belt and totally uncalled for. Not only do you appear to have a problem with gays who have become successfull (perhaps Communism would be more to your liking) in their fields of endeavor, you also seem to be exhibiting some overt signs of racism as well.

Oh...and just for the record, I am involved in a six year relationship with a Filipino. Sorry that does not match with your stereo-typed image of pretty boy Latin lover bi-national relationships. I also have gay friends that are involved with Europeans as well, so you really do need to move beyond your marginalization of Latinos.

If you are really sincere about wanting gays to be able to bring their partners to this country, and there are, by the way, some 40,000 bi-national couples, then try writing a few letters to your Congressman and representatives to encourage them to support UAFA. That might do a great deal more to help than writing snarky and debasing commentaries to our hosts of this site who are working very hard to bring gay civil-rights to America.

This issue may not seem important to you, but I can assure you that this IS an important issue that concerns a great many Americans, both gay and straight.

Too bad we aren't all rich, as DaveA seems to think. One of the profoundly insulting anomalies of immigration law is that if you are, indeed, rich, American citizenship is for sale! Usually for the price of $1M, but also available as a bargain at $500K, if you are willing to put up with the stipulations. So any Sharia-loving Saudi with the right connections can waltz in, open a McDonald's and, as an 'investor' and 'job creator,' set about recruiting a terror network.

Chris and Andoni, I, for one, absolutely rely upon this blog to get news of the status of UAFA. The gay press is, in my view, fanatically silent in general about this injustice.

And for the record, can we please stop using the 36,000ish number for couples affected? That number came from the 2000 census and so reflects a different era in terms of people being out and worse, in terms of the number of gays who have 'globalized' via the internet. Internet dating did not even *begin* to create long term binational partnerships in any numbers until 10 years ago (my husband and I were one of gay.com's first success stories, and that was in 1998!). I am willing to bet a whole lot that the number of LGBT binational couples is well over 100,000 today.

Whoa! Dave A, Feeling your self esteem drop reading this blog? You are giving away too much about yourself when you talk that way. Start liking yourself a little better and maybe you won't feel the need to be so C*nty.
My partner is from Japan, we're blue collar workers and don't feel we have to respect your opinion of us, at all.